At Abercrombie, Men Get 100% Wool. Women Get Plastic.

Abercrombie & Fitch has been running an ad this season with a simple promise: "Merino wool, cotton, and more natural fibers crafted to set a new standard."

In response to @rsbrownfield's video, we went looking for that standard. In the video, which has drawn more than 94,000 likes, she put the labels of Abercrombie's women's sweaters on screen: one named for wool was 66% recycled polyester, another sold as merino was 66% nylon. Then she clicked over to the men's section, where the sweaters were labeled 100% merino wool.

A few sweaters on a screen can be a coincidence. So we read all of them.

On November 3, 2026, we went through every sweater in Abercrombie's U.S. men's and women's sections, 77 styles in all, and wrote down the fiber content and full price of each one.

What we found

• Men's: 4 of 29 sweaters are 100% merino wool. They cost $85 to $110.
• Women's: none of 48 is 100% wool. In all 19 women's sweaters that contain wool, wool is 30% of the fabric or less.
• The same name means different sweaters. Abercrombie's men's "Merino Wool-Blend" sweater is 70% merino. Its ten women's "Merino Wool-Blend" sweaters are 30%.
• The prices are the same. The median full price was $85 in both sections.

Same name, different sweater

The clearest comparison is the one Abercrombie made itself, by using the same name in both sections.

The women's version is mostly nylon. The men's version is mostly merino. Both carry the same two words on the tag.

Across both sections, men's sweaters are more likely to be made entirely of natural fiber: 48% of men's styles, compared with 21% of women's.

Every sweater with wool, side by side

Men's

Women's

What the women's section does have

To be fair to the numbers, the women's section is not short on wool in total. It has more sweaters that contain some wool, 19 to the men's 7, and four of those pair 25% wool with 40% cotton, which makes them mostly natural fiber. The women's section also carries five sweaters made entirely of cashmere, priced from $110 to $190. The men's section has one, at $200.

And one fabric crosses the aisle unchanged. The women's Wool-Blend Easy Funnel Neck Sweater and the men's Crew Sweater are both 66% recycled polyester and 25% wool, at the same $95.

What the women's section did not have, on the day we checked, was a single sweater made entirely of sheep's wool.

Is this allowed?

Yes. The Wool Products Labeling Act requires every wool garment sold in the U.S. to list each fiber and its percentage. Its rules bar names that suggest a garment is made "wholly or in part of a particular fiber, when such is not the case" (16 CFR § 300.8).

A sweater that is 30% merino is, in part, merino. Calling it a "merino wool-blend" is accurate. Nothing in the rule says how much of the named fiber a garment has to contain, or that the same name has to mean the same thing in two sections of one store. The number on the label is the only place the difference shows up.

The same goes for coats. We read the full label on nine women's wool coats, including four that are 100% wool. And for quarter zips, we found six women's quarter-zip sweaters without polyester, in cashmere, merino and cotton.

How we did this

On November 3, 2026, we read the fiber content and full price of every sweater listed in the men's and women's sweater sections of abercrombie.com in the U.S. We counted each style once, combining color variants and near-identical versions such as licensed team designs with the same fabric. We left out hoodies, jackets, tube tops and sets, and two styles that list different fabrics depending on color (the A&F Essential Crew Sweater, in both sections, and the men's Quarter-Zip Sweater).

"Wool" here means sheep's wool, including merino and lambswool. Cashmere is counted separately. Labels are as published by Abercrombie & Fitch; we did not test the garments. Stock changes daily, so a sweater listed here may have sold out or been added since.

This report is part of The Sweater, Ten Years Later, a Toxome market study of how sweaters at three U.S. retailers have changed. The Knitwear Report has the alternatives, in alpaca, cashmere, merino, hemp and cotton.